Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate his Department has made of the number of available Duty Solicitors providing representation at police stations in (a) England and (b) London in each of the last five years.

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA) is responsible for commissioning duty solicitor services and the day-to-day administration of the court and police station duty schemes. This includes keeping membership records, allocating slots and producing and maintaining duty solicitor rotas. The LAA monitors membership across individual duty schemes. Information about duty solicitor volumes broken down by individual scheme is published as part of the LAA’s quarterly statistics.

At a national level, the LAA monitors capacity across criminal legal aid contracts on an ongoing basis and, where demand is greater than the available supply, takes action to secure additional provision to ensure the continuity of legal aid-funded services.

The LAA is satisfied that there continues to be sufficient duty solicitor coverage on the duty schemes operating across England, including in London. Provision under the duty schemes is demand led and so there may be variations in numbers across each local rota or other fluctuations in numbers depending on prevailing market conditions, and other internal factors such as firms merging or other consolidation activity.